


War Roses By Any Other Names

by LucyCrewe11 (Raphaela_Crowley)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friendship, No Incest, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/LucyCrewe11
Summary: While working as a nurse at a hospital in London, Lucy Pevensie makes friends with a wounded solider who lied about his age and name in order to enlist.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie/Lucy Pevensie, Peter Pevensie/Susan Pevensie
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	War Roses By Any Other Names

**Author's Note:**

> (Written April 2011)
> 
> Set sometime during world-war 2; and you'll have to forgive me if it's not accurate to the time-period, younger-me didn't do her research. She thought reading Atonement twice counted as researching World War 2. 
> 
> Edmund/Lucy, non-siblings A.U.

" _Are you sure you're eighteen?"_

" _Why, do I look older?"_

" _Alberta Scrubb?"_

" _It's a typographical error, it's supposed to be Albert A. Scrubb."_

_The man's face is a blur, his own voice is a distant echo. Then it's a complete change of scene; one second 'Albert' is lying about his age and name and, though he's sure they suspect but simply can't prove his bluff and 'borrowed' ID, breathes a sigh of relief when he is accepted regardless, the next he is in a muddy trench somewhere._

" _Al...Al..."_

" _You all right, Mate?"_

" _I can't feel my legs, Albert."_

" _Dash it!"_

" _How 'bout you, Al?"_

" _My arm feels like it's on fire."_

" _How's Heath?"_

" _Heath?"_

" _I'm right as rain, Squirt."_

" _I told you not to call me that; you barely have two years on me."_

" _I know you lied about your age, Squirt."_

" _Mate, please let me hit him."_

" _Albert, Heath, seriously, can't we do this later? Now if one of you buggers would please get off your bloody rear and help me up, I'd be much obliged."_

" _Pick him up, Al."_

" _Me? Why me?"_

" _Because, you sixteen year old feckless idiot, I'm carrying three rifles, two of which belong to the enemy and are loaded. I can't carry him, too."_

" _Who said anything about carrying? I don't want to be carried! I want one of you to help me to my feet."_

" _You have to be carried, Mate, sorry, no way around it. You said yourself you can't feel your legs."_

" _I say, where's my gun? If you've got it along with the other weapons, Heath, you best give it here."_

" _You can't even lift a rifle right now."_

" _I know, but that's hardly common knowledge, now is it? And what if we get separated and I need to shoot or else be shot at, eh?"_

" _Fine, here's my pistol, guard it with your life, Mate."_

" _Where's the rest of the blasted troop? Albert can't carry me, that arm of his is bleeding freely now."_

" _I can't see anyone, there's too much dust and fog."_

" _Pick him up, Squirt-I mean, Albert, you'll be fine."_

" _All right."_

" _Duck!"_

" _Where?"_

" _No, duck your head, moron!"_

" _They're shooting again! I'm so bloody tired of being shot at!"_

" _Drop me!"_

" _No way, Mate."_

" _Al, seriously, do it!"_

" _No, it's all right, I'm coming, hang on you two."_

" _Heath's coming, hold on."_

" _Albert, you don't look so good, drop me."_

" _I'm fine."_

" _No you aren't."_

" _All right, I hid the enemy weapons, I'll take him now."_

" _Here, Mate, Heath is going to carry you back into the trench before one of us gets-"_

" _ALBERT!"_

* * *

"Lucy, wake up!" The urgent whispered hiss broke into Lucy's dream; and it was a beautiful dream, too, before the voice ripped it away. She'd dreamed that she was in a beautiful velvet gown wearing the softest satin slippers imaginable walking along a glittering white-sand beach at sunset with a Lion the size of a cart horse with showers of pure gold in his mane.

Now she was back in the Nurses' dormitories on her hard metal-rail bed with the painfully thin mattress and that insufferable chemical-clean smell seeping through everything and clouding the air in place of the rich smell that had come off of the mysterious Lion's mane.

The other nurses, all young ladies around Lucy's own age, were already making their beds and dressing themselves; bonnets were being fixed, aprons properly tied, fingernails cleaned, nameplates bearing only the letter N. (N, for nurse) and the bearer's surname being adjusted so that they didn't hang crookedly.

The Ward Sister would have a fit if any of them turned up with a speck of build-up under their thumbnail or with a loose apron. Why, just the other day, poor little Gael Kirke, the youngest nurse there, who had never learned to tie bows and knots real well, had been so severely criticized that she thought for sure she was going to get the sack and began to weep openly.

It was Marjorie Preston who had woken Lucy just now; for the two of them had made a pact that if one of them over-slept by accident at any time, the other would wake the sleeper.

Marjorie and Lucy were the closest thing to a pair of real best friends that hospital had amongst its nurses at the time, even though neither of them-what with the strict routine-had had any time to talk and discover whether or not they actually liked one another. But they had to _assume_ they did. They had to assume they liked one another real well, because as bad as things were both girls felt keenly that they would have been a hundred times worse without a chum to smile at in passing or to cover for you when the going got rough.

Lucy didn't at all like working at the hospital. She thought she cried even more than Gael did after lights-out, and she wasn't particularly ashamed of it, either. It was her sister Susan who had suggested she become a nurse; because she herself had taken a course in nursing when she was Lucy's age and said it had been all right though she was glad none of her beaus had ever taken sick and turned up and seen her all sweaty and gross in her uniform after a long day because that would have put an end to their interest in her, she was certain.

And it was either become a nurse, or go stay with her mean, old maid of a great aunt, Aunt Augusta, while the rest of the family went to America. The hospital was strict, but the living arrangements and food weren't any worse than they would have been at Aunt Augusta's.

There was no one in the world more stingy and unbearable than Aunt Augusta. She'd taken Susan and Lucy for a whole month in the summer holidays three years ago when Mr. And Mrs. Pevensie had taken sick with the measles; and both girls had quickly learned to utterly detest living with her. She only let the girls have jam on their bread once a week, and then only a very thin layer she herself scrapped off with the knife. Butter was never allowed. And as for tea, they were allowed milk but never any sugar. And when Lucy protested that she simply _could not_ -never had been able to-swallow down tea without at least a little lump of sugar, Aunt Augusta had told her that young girls should be seen and not heard, and that if she was ever so impertinent again she would be sent to her room without her tea and should not expect to be called down for supper later, either. The best cake they'd ever had at their great Aunts' place was a splendid white one, when she had a small dinner party; but they were only allowed a sliver each (more a teasing sample than a real piece) and were not allowed to have any of the lovely cherry preserves the guests had gotten along with it. So being a nurse was much better than being Augusta's great niece.

Still, it was horrid, feeling abandoned like this, knowing that while you were cleaning bed-pans and binding broken arms, your beautiful sister was having a scrumptious time sight-seeing in America.

Nonetheless, there was nothing to be done about it, so Lucy got up, dressed, and made her bed as the other girls were doing, helped little Gael with her apron knot, and straightened out her nameplate.

The day went on quickly, with too much to do for there to be time to be appropriately bored.

After breakfast, moping the floors of one of their hospital wing's hallways, Lucy worked alongside Marjorie, who whispered that she wished they'd gotten Anne Featherstone for a Ward Sister instead of that sour Madam who never smiled.

"Anne is cross, too, of course," she explained very seriously. "All Ward Sister's here are. But she's extremely pretty, you know, and her family is wonderfully rich. It would be nicer to be bossed about by a pretty person, who cared more about themselves and their splendid things than about her charges' daily mess-ups. I'm sure she would yell if didn't fold something correctly, but she wasn't _care_ , and she'd forget and move onto something else. The Ward Sister we've got never does; in a sick way, she cares, and she never lets up. It's too dreadful. The woman hasn't got any place in society, and not a single marriage prospect, they say, so she fusses over us-we're all she has. Dreadful. Simply dreadful. I don't want to be all she has. Moreover, isn't she just horrendous-looking when she screams? Her chin splits and her eyes pop, and that mole on her cheek stands out. I know it's terrible of me to say that, but I _think_ I can trust you, Lucy, to understand. Anne, I imagine, would just go very red with fury, and perhaps wrinkle her nose, I could bear that."

Lucy nodded. She didn't agree with Marjorie, thinking Anne Featherstone, from what she knew about her, a very disagreeable person, but she understood where she was coming from in spite of her own differing opinion. Their Ward Sister could indeed be frighteningly ugly when she got angry; somehow-and Marjorie _was_ right about this-her being so horrid to look at _did_ make it worse.

"I think," said Lucy, pushing her mop down into the cleaning solution filled water, not without just a trace of bitterness in her tone, "Susan should have stayed here and become a Ward Sister. She's strict and all, but she's _very_ refined. My sister would never bawl and holler at us the way our Ward Sister does."

"It's just as well she didn't, Lucy." Marjorie shook her head and rung out her mop. "They'd never have put you in her ward if she worked here. They'd be frightened of nippletism."

"Of what?" gasped Lucy, certain her companion had gotten the word wrong.

"Oh, you know, nippletism," she repeated.

"Do you mean _nepotism_?"

"Yes, that sounds right," Marjorie admitted, a touch grudgingly. "How did you know?"

"Susan likes to read aloud from the dictionary."

"Oh."

"But, you're right, Marjorie. They wouldn't have put me with her. And, anyway, I shouldn't be so mean about her getting to go to America, since she loves it so much. I'm glad she's happy. I just wish..."

This was the most they'd gotten to talk during work in a long, long, time and it was instantly cut short when the Ward Sister turned up and barked for them to hurry with the floors because the patients needed more clean bed pans; a soldier who'd lost a leg in battle had just peed on the floor.

"Which, really, is no excuse," so said the Ward Sister, muttering to herself.

What Lucy had been going to say was that she wished Susan hadn't changed so much. In her letters, her sister talked of nothing but what parties she went to, what young men she met, and what she'd worn. She always _had_ been a mite too keen on being very grown up, and now that she was old enough to be taken seriously, and pretty enough to have as many boyfriends-or beaus, as she called them-as she liked, she'd become a rather silly, conceded young woman. But Lucy had liked it better when her parents had laughed when 'little Su' used big words and said she would be perfectly charming when she grew up. There was nothing so very nice about a girl with potential once she had reached it and would hardly reach any higher on the social ladder if she married a king.

Then there was this wrenched war. Lucy hated the war with a burning passion. The way she saw it, everyone was fighting because all men and boys were nothing but a bunch of 'swaggering, bullying idiots' and had to go around shooting each other for no reason at all. And now look what they'd done! Plenty of men had died from their injuries in this hospital, thanks to such madness.

She would never forget the first batch of injured soldiers she saw carried in on stretchers. They were all bleeding; two were badly burned so that their faces couldn't be made out; three were missing their left feet; and one, Lucy never forgot this, was little more than a vegetable, his mind long gone, and he was rolled in singing softly to himself. The song, Lucy always said, would break your heart. Was it sad? No! Not even a little, but its tone and the singer's childish voice coming from a man who _must_ have been at least forty, shook her up a great deal.

After the bed pans were done, Lucy had a million other tasks and several patients to look after, and she was so exhausted when it was all over that she was ready to just _fall_ into bed, not caring on this day how hard and uncomfortable it was, when someone said, "Pevensie, mail!"

Thus alerted that she had a letter from Susan, Lucy took it gratefully and curled up to read it. She was sure it would be very boring, all about young men and barely a footnote on Mother and Father.

_My dearest sister, Lucy-Lu,_

_How is nursing going, dear? I know the Ward Sister is tough, mine was too, but I'm sure she means well._

_I went to the most splendid party this afternoon...It was a tea party held in the garden of the British Consul. His garden was very elegant, all done up with fountains and gazebos. And I wore the most lovely new blue dress, Lu, with a flower pattern and a pair of Mother's pearls to off-set the look, complete with lipstick and rogue. Everyone said I looked fetching._

_But, alas, I'm afraid the occasion was marred because I've now met two wonderful young men who make my other beaus utterly unacceptable. Which is all right, if only it were one young man. But, no, there would be two, and I can't make up my mind about which one I like best. It vexes me, being so indecisive, for that's not like me at all, as you know._

_The first one is the son of the British Consul. He happens to be_ very _handsome, and I thought from the second I met him that he fancied me._

_The second is not an American either, but an Englishman visiting America with his parents. He wanted to join the army, but they wouldn't let him go. I didn't say so, because I didn't want to make him cross, but I'm so glad they said he must go to University and come with them to America; I hate the thought of him fighting. I did see him punch a boy in the face once. The boy did provoke him, to be fair, bumping into him and then demanding an apology. Regardless, I told him I wouldn't associate with a young man who acted like that, and he apologized and shook hands with the bumper in my view. So that's how I know_ this _man fancies me as well._

_You would like him, his name is...ugh, it does make me shudder, I don't suppose his parents were thinking aright when they named him, Peter Peterson. Isn't it the worst? Can you imagine being Mrs. Peter Peterson? When I think of that, I'm almost positive I would rather be with the Consul's son instead to spare myself the embarrassment. But, it isn't Peter's fault, poor dear, he didn't choose it._

_Anyway, where was I? Right, you would like him. I showed a picture of you to him and he said you were the most precious thing he'd ever seen; and he said it like he meant it, too. He says some very strange things, and I think he's queer in his upper story, but in a good way._

_One thing I like best about him is that he's kind. Oh, but he is too reliable, you know. Not at all exciting. Peter colour-codes his paperwork and books, he's painfully polite, like you know he'll never do anything unexpected. Very stable. Perhaps too much so. His friends all call him Saint Peter as a joke. He will make whomever he marries a fine husband who will never give her a day's worry, but I'm afraid of being bored. Yet, at the same time, I find it hard to imagine being bored with someone so sweet, though by all accounts I should be. It's very strange._

_Peter is nice to look at, I like his smiles. Only, like I said, the British Consul's son is so very handsome. So I can't even go by that, which is very unfair. Can't go by money either. Because Peter will have a fine career in medicine someday soon, I just know he will, so before I know it he will be every bit as rich as the Consul's son! Oh, can you believe my awful luck?_

_Yes, I know you would tell me to pick Peter, dear sister, but it is not so simple as you think._

_I feel in my bones that whichever one I end up with I will regret at sometime or another in my life._

_Oh, and it seems the Germans have made the crossing difficult just now. Mother says she hopes you won't mind another few months boarding with the other nurses. But then always remember it could be worse. You could be with Aunt Augusta. I think you were smart not to go live with her._

_Love,_

_Susan_

"Another few months?" yawned Lucy, gaping at the letter through teary eyes. "How will I survive?"

But survive she somehow continued to do in spite of her deep-rooted certainty that she simply could not.

The days blended into one another, till she almost wondered, and said so to Marjorie, too, if there was ever a time when she was not cleaning bed pans and setting legs in splints.

Then there came one hot, tiresome afternoon, when the Ward Sister instructed Lucy, very sharply, to take luncheon to the injured solider in bed number eight and then look in on the one in number seven while she was at it.

The one in number seven, she said, was out cold but moaned constantly in his sleep; he had been shot twice in the stomach and had evidently already had an injured arm in the war prior to that.

"Sit with him," she instructed coolly. "See if you can't keep him quiet for a bit. Talk to him if he comes to."

"I've more bed pans left to clean," Lucy blurted innocently.

"Let Kirke, Pole, and Preston take care of it." She waved the matter off and shoved a tray into Lucy's hands.

Obediently, Lucy nodded and took the tray to the solider in bed eight. "Hullo, Soldier."

"Hallo, Nurse," he replied, real cheerful-like. "The name's Heath."

Lucy smiled. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Heath."

He glanced down at his food, which was some sort of over-cooked stew with a small hunk of brown bread and a small helping of tapioca pudding on the side.

"Oh, you eat it," said Lucy.

"Why?" Heath wrinkled his nose.

"I don't know," she mused. "The doctor says it's healthy, I suppose."

"Would _you_ eat it?"

"If I had to," Lucy sighed. "I was hoping so for carrots for a change, but all they had in the kitchen were turnips again."

"That's turnips in the stew?"

"Y-yes."

"I was really far off."

"You don't need anything else, Mr. Heath?" Lucy asked politely.

"Nope."

"Well, then, I've got to go and speak to the solider in the bed next to you. The Ward Sister said he's been really fitful and needs to be soothed."

"Ah, yes, poor Squirt." Heath clicked his tongue. "Well, Albert, really, I guess, but _I_ like to call him squirt. Anyway, I'm just glad he didn't die. Mate, that's our other friend, he did. They'd have had to cut off his legs if he hadn't, you know. But I still wish he had lived; he was such a good chap."

"Excuse me." Lucy did not like to hear about deaths. She went over to Albert A. Scrubb's bed and peered down at his face.

It was a nice face, she found she liked it quite a bit, only somehow this man-boy, really, for he did not look so very much older than herself-did not seem at all like she imagined an 'Albert' would look. He had dark hair and a pale face, and his eyes, under their scrunched up lids, were brown. His brow and forehead were very serious, but there was a sort of jest about it, as if he didn't take being so serious, very, well, seriously.

Suddenly he jolted himself and was awake, panting a little, gaping up at Lucy.

"Are you all right?" She sat down beside him and took his hand.

He blinked at her. "What's your name?"

"Pevensie."

"That's a surname," 'Albert' stated flatly.

"Yes," said Lucy, cautiously, glancing nervously over her shoulder.

"What's your christian name?"

She lowered her voice and leaned close to his face. "We're not allowed to give our first names. I'm Nurse Pevensie." Moving her face back and her voice returning to its former pitch, she added, "I'm also meant to tell you that you're in a hospital in London."

He tried to shrug his shoulders and winced in pain from both his arm and his stomach.

"How did it happen?" Lucy wanted to know.

"War," he said sardonically.

"Oh." She thought it was safe to assume he wouldn't say anything further on the subject.

"I was trying to carry my mate, when suddenly..." He swallowed hard. "Tell me, he's dead, isn't he?"

Or perhaps not so safe. "Yes. Heath said so."

"Heath lived, did he?"

"He's sitting right over there." Lucy pointed to his bed.

'Albert' glanced over at Heath; the two of them stared across the narrow space between their two beds as if silently communicating, "Well, it's over."

Lucy always thought afterward that the boy in bed number seven was living proof that sometimes things don't happen the way you expect them to. She fully expected that the boy who was-according to all charts-eighteen but certainly didn't look it would soon be sent off to another ward; and surely she would not, seeing as there was so much else to attend to, be asked to sit with him again, now that he was clearly as all right as he could possibly be given the circumstances.

But the boy soldier took on more fits, over the next couple of days, some of which Lucy strongly suspected were put-on more than properly _took_. And he requested Nurse Pevensie by name.

The Ward Sister suspiciously tried to pump him, pressing him to tattle that Lucy had, against policy, given him her christian name; but he could not give up a name that he himself had not been offered, so the issue became moot. He would calm down and talk to no one else except for Nurse Pevensie, and so Nurse Pevensie they sent to him.

Marjorie suggested that this was likely because Lucy's presence was never flighty or nervous, laced with an unspoken curiosity that was, naturally, forbidden to them. Only it was not the kind of 'forbidden' that could be enforced through direct actions or scolding.

This 'Albert' turned out to be pretty easy to talk to, Lucy found. He had a natural-albeit dark-sense of humour about him, which she liked. His stories of the war, few and far between, were never gory, as Heath's were before he was moved on; he took the listener into account.

Lucy told him about her sister, mentioning her most recent letter. "But you see, Mr. Albert," she said, never able to call him by anything else, aside from Mr. Scrubb, which was worse, "she says it's not for ever. The Germans have to let my parents and sister home from America soon. I'll be home soon."

"Yeah," he snorted, not meaning to be unfeeling, but sounding cold nonetheless. "If home's still there."

She left him quickly that day, snatching up his bed pan and going onto her other duties. But long before the next day started his statement was forgiven and forgotten; she never held a grudge. And so their conversation picked up more or less where it left off.

"My sister is madly in love with two men right now," Lucy told him, unable to keep a mocking twitch out of the side of her mouth. "She can't decide which she likes best. I'm hoping she'll like the 'good' one who she says she can never marry on account of his name if nothing else. But I think it'd be nice to have a saint for a husband, don't you?"

"It depends on the wife," said 'Albert'. "I'm not a saint, but if I had a wife, I would be good to her, Nurse Pevensie. Of course, she would have to be the sort who could understand me. Your sister sounds, though, like she would benefit from marrying someone especially stable."

"Yes, so that's all right."

The following morning, 'Albert' ate his breakfast down so quickly that Lucy told him the hospital was not going to run out of toast. Really, he only wanted more time to talk to her; he was healing up, slowly but surely, and he would be moved on sooner rather than later. He wished she could tell him her name; because he wanted to see her again. Then, in all fairness, he had not told her _his_.

His last day in her ward came at the end of the week, and both were feeling a touch heartbroken.

Lucy had gotten a new letter from Susan. "I have some good news."

"What?"

"My sister has decided she loves her saint after all," Lucy giggled. "The consul's son is history with her."

'Albert' smiled. "No news about when they're coming back to England, though?"

She shook her head. "No." The letter had stated that Susan meant to bring Peter to meet Lucy when it was safe to travel abroad again, but there had been no hint as to when she thought it would be. Lucy, on a dreary day such as this, when her friend in bed number seven was going away, to another part of the hospital, where she would never see him, could not be her usual optimistic self and felt sure it would be a long, long time.

"I have to go now, Mr. Albert."

He sighed. "Goodbye, Nurse Pevensie."

Lucy hastily looked both ways. "Lucy," she whispered in a rushed breath. "My name's Lucy."

"I'm Edmund."

That was to be the last she saw of him for a while; but when Lucy did finally meet him again, after the war ended, upon studying his face for a moment, she decided the name suited him.


End file.
